Posts by Bart Janssen
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Southerly: Sign this Petition, in reply to Lilith __,
I don’t give a flying fuck why Dirty Politics was written or when it was released
Nor do I. I just think it's silly to say that the intention was not to try and stop the train wreck that is about to ensue.
That is may have an ongoing effect might also be nice but given that our MSM appear to have uniformly turned their back on the embarrassing incident (wherein they got their "news" from a scumbag work for one of the major political parties) I suspect that in three years time we will still be mysteriously getting lots of stories in the news that discredit those opposed to National.
We will still be asking Cunliffe why he is 1 billion out in his number while cheerfully ignoring Key being 1.4 billion out - sigh.
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Southerly: Sign this Petition, in reply to Moz,
Some people are talking as though that’s a bad thing.
As far as the MSM are concerned the big problem with Dirty Politics is they aren't getting revenue from it hence it must be bad, whereas honourable ACT and National party advertising is clearly a good thing. sigh.
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Most depressing of all is that “the public doesn’t care” has become the accepted analysis—certainly by the major newspaper chains.
It's not that the analysis is accepted or even remotely reasonable, but rather that many of the MSM have been shown to be at best incompetent and at worst deeply complicit in an ongoing hidden campaign to attack anyone seen as a problem by John Key's government.
In short the MSM are covering their own arses and care very little about their role in society.
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Southerly: Sign this Petition, in reply to Sacha,
Surely a simpler answer is the book was timed to maximise sales? Your capitalist mind must see that possibility. :)
Much like the John Key autobiography and the NZRugby cover picture - yeah right.
Dirty Politics was obviously timed to influence this election and comments otherwise are disingenuous.
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Speaker: Vote for Water, in reply to Jake Starrow,
My point is that Opposition parties can promise many a brand new day.
One point to note we really have had only two types of government in the last few decades and yes you are right neither of them have performed.
But surely that is an argument in favour of trying a third government and letting them demonstrate how venal and selfish they can be.
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Speaker: Vote for Water, in reply to Moz,
:P
freeing up kiwi farmers to use UP those natural resources
fixed :)
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Speaker: Vote for Water, in reply to Jake Starrow,
Neither National nor Labour have a good past record on these issues.
The difference is National have basically said screw it we are just going to make money off the cows and to hell with the future because by then we won't be in power and don't care.
By contrast Labour have said they will do something about water quality, whether you believe them is another matter entirely. Similarly for The Greens who have said they will do something, again your belief is your issue.
So you are left with voting for a party that have stated they don't care or voting for parties that might come through on their promises. Doesn't seem all that complicated really.
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Speaker: Vote for Water, in reply to Sacha,
So a simple specific example: electric cars are good for the environment, right? Well it's more complicated, the batteries used in the cars use rare earth metals whose mining is very damaging to the environment but that occurs far away. And given the relative efficiency of modern internal combustion engines then throwing out a functional combustion engine to replace it with a new electric car bears the massive fabrication costs in both energy and pollution.
But all that said if we don't start actually using electric cars we'll never develop the infrastructure to make them truly viable.
So it's probably worthwhile ... maybe, providing we really can increase efficiencies, lifetime of batteries etc.
A more general example is any intervention in ecosystems - because as we have been discovering over time linkages are non-obvious and complex. One typical mistake is to assume all exotic species harm the indigenous environment. Pinus radiata is a good example of an exotic, surely it would be good to replace pine forests with natives, but that would almost certainly turn NZ into a net importer of wood rather than a net exporter, that would almost certainly result in the wood we would have supplied to the world, instead coming from much more at risk environments e.g. tropical rain forests.
None of that is to imply there aren't simple obvious wins that really are wins - but even then getting input from genuinely knowledgable (unbiased) experts will help do it better.
That's what I mean by evidence-based policy. Figure out what you want ideologically then let experts get the data and use that data to define how to achieve your ideology or, much harder, to redefine your ideology if the data show it to be flawed.
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Speaker: Vote for Water, in reply to Hilary Stace,
You mean you don’t vote on emotion?
Well disgust is an emotional response and it certainly has influenced my vote :)
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The problem I have is that while some parties have good scientific policies on water, there are other places where the policy is unsupported by any data at all.
While it's really clear to me that voting for National is terrible for the environment it is less clear that the other parties have consistent enough policy making to actually do good. And especially with the environment the obvious answer is often not the right answer. It's great to be well intentioned but not so great when you are not flexible enough to change position when new data comes along.
So yeah I'll do my best to vote for water but I would be much happier to vote for evidence-based policy.